The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole

6

Maksim

My breath exhales,blowing dust around my nostrils as my nose almost touches the stone floor. I push, grunting as my muscles strain and coil, shoving the weight of my body from the floor for the… I’ve lost track.

My brow furrows. Sweat drips from it to plunk onto the dust of the floor of my cage. My mind is blank, or at least, I’m trying to keep it blank. That’s why I’ve been doing pushups—one handed, two handed, whatever—for an hour.

This is not my first time behind bars. Hardly. I’ve never done hard hard time, but I’ve stared at bars and narrow walls until the madness started to take me. My longest stretch was a year in Vladimir Yetetarin Prison, a miserable hell of a place outside Moscow. The only thing that kept me sane in there was chess with my older, lifer roommate Pavel. The only thing that kept me safe was my size. My size and the fact that Pavel happened to be the local shot-caller.

As long as I keep the win ratio in his favor, I wasn’t going to get jumped by fifteen guys in the showers.

Over the years though, especially now that I’ve got clean, it’s exercise that keeps me sane if I’m behind bars. It cleans my soul. It blanks my mind. It keeps me from trying to count days or hours, because that’s how you lose control. That way leads to madness.

No one actively wants jail time. But if you ask most people on the street, they think a few months in lockup is no problem. They’re wrong. I don’t care how hard you think you are, or even are. Prison is hard. Prison breaks you, by design. A few months is a lifetime. A few years an eternity. I want to tell those people to go sit in their bathroom, but without the use of the shower, for a week and see if they want to blow their brains out.

And yet this time behind bars is different. Very, very different. I’m in a foreign country, for one. I’m in the US—at least I think I am. But the big difference here is that I have nothing to count down to. I have no idea how long I’m to be here. Maybe a month. Maybe forever. I don’t even know why I’m here.

It’s also different, because of her.

She never should have been in the room. She shouldn’t work here. I want to scream at the powers in charge who allowed a sweet, gorgeous, petite little temptation like that to work in a place like this. Those are the real criminals. In here, she’s chum for the sharks. Bait for the wolves.

Bait for me.

Or at least, my undoing. One look and my whole plan was unraveled. I won’t get another shot like that. But even if I did? If I were back in that room, back in that same scenario with the opportunity to actually follow through once again? No. If it was her as the doctor again, it would never happen. Not in a million played out scenarios.

I might be a savage. I might be a monster. But I know without question I am incapable of hurting something that good and innocent. Not as the man I am today, at least.

With heroin, or any deep addiction, everything else is disposable. Everything. Your family, your money, your capacity to love and feel empathy. Your own self-worth. Your soul. It’s all for sale, discounted.

Fire sale: everything must go. Because there’s only room for you and the needle. Addiction is narcissism on overdrive, without breaks. Without even the concept of breaks. It’s full throttle me until you hit the inevitable wall or cliff. And then the world can finally breathe a sigh of relief that you’re not wasting space anymore.

I smile grimly and shake my head. That was me. That was my life. Until Yuri Volkov saved it and dragged me out of the gutter. It’s poetically fucked up in a sense that crime saved my life. I was a criminal since I was old enough to stick a can of tuna in my pocket at the grocery store. But it was the Bratva that showed me brotherhood. Family. Purpose. Honor, as strange as it would sound to an outsider.

With a grunt, I’m up on my feet. Dust sticks to the sweat on my legs and palms like a gritty film. But I don’t care. I bolt across the small cell and jump up onto the bars. I climb, swinging my hands up to the top of the cage to hang there. My jaw grinds as I lift, pulling myself up and down, over and over.

All of this exercising isn’t just to keep me from going insane though. It’s not to take my mind off of my situation, or the bars, or the uncertainty of where even the fuck I am.

It’s to take my mind off of her. The Doctor. Quinn.

There’s a myth in movies of the hardened criminal keeping pictures of loved ones on the walls… reminders of the life waiting for them when they get out. In reality though, there’s no place for that behind bars. Hope will kill you in a place like this. Goodness will weigh you down like a stone tied to your ankles, until the waves pull you under.

She’s goodness. She’s hope. And I cannot have that in my head.

I close my eyes, lifting over and over until my body screams in agony. And then I keep going. But even with the burning shred of muscles and the sting of sweat and grit in my eyes and on my tongue, she’s still there. She’s still in my head.

I replay the flip of her long, dark ponytail as she whirled to look at me. I replay the spark of fear and something else in those big blue eyes. My pulse throbs even harder than I’m pushing it with exercise at the memory of her skin under my hand. Her pulse throbbing beneath my fingertips. The wetness glistening like temptation on her lips.

And then, all I remember or know is the memory of kissing her. Of having her against my body, her mouth shuddering against mine. Her whimpers like honey across my tongue. A moment of pure heat and goodness.

I can feel my heart racing. My skin burns with the need to be close to her. My hands grip the bars tighter, wanting it to be her thighs beneath my grip instead. And my cock surges thickly, pulsing against the thin material of my prison pants.

With a snarl, I drop to the floor in cloud of dust, hissing. My eyes narrow and close. I try and growl the memory of her out of my goddamn head. But it’s not working. Nothing will work. I know this feeling well. This burning beneath the skin. This need.

She’s my new drug. The kiss was the needle. And this ache is my addiction.

I sit down onto the edge of my metal cot and drop my face into my hands. I suck in air, trying to meditate. Trying to slow my heart and calm the dragon roaring for more inside of me. For a second, it works. Until the door to the stone room opens with a rusty squeeze and a metal bang. I scowl and look up as three guards come in, smirking.

“On your feet, comrade,” one sneers. My eyes rove over his face, and the faces of his two buddies. There’s a nervous excitement there in all of them. That’s not good.

“Hey, on your feet!” Another barks. I frown, continuing to look clueless.

“Fuck, either of you speak Russian?”

“Nope.”

One with tan skin smirks at me. “Hablas español, cabron?” He snickers.

Yes.

The other chuckle. I just smile benignly.

The first guy groans. “Fuck it.”

He gestures with his hands turning. I know what they want. They want me to put my wrists behind me, and back to the bars of the door so they can cuff me for transport. I know that. I don’t need to let them know I know that, though.

I shrug, smiling.

They frown. They’re getting annoyed.

“Now, motherfucker!”

One lifts the shotgun in his hand, aiming it me. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. These men are hacks playing cowboy. It plays into my theory that I’m at someplace off grid. Not military, but military funded. Guantanamo or something. These men might have military training. But they’re not soldiers. He’s pointing a shotgun at rows of thick metal bars, for fuck’s sake. The splash damage would take their own faces off. Maybe mine too. But none of them would walk away without serious damage if he pulled that trigger.

The other one levels an M16 at me though. That one’s going to get through the bars just fine.

“Now,” he growls.

His buddy gestures with his hands. This time, I turn and put my arms to the bars. This might be a bad idea. But one way or another, they’re getting me out of this cell. It’s this or they’ll get a team in here and beat the fuck out of me. I might be rough, and hard. But no one’s rough and hard enough to go a few rounds with ten guys in tactical gear with stun guns.

Besides, it might give me an idea of where I am. My pulse thuds. It might give me another glimpse of the doctor, too.

The cuffs clink around my wrist. They open the door, keeping three guns trained on me. I’m tempted to fake an attack, just to see how quickly they piss themselves. Might not be worth getting shot in the face for, though.

They clamp walking irons on my ankles and guide me out of the room. Through the double metal doors, we exit into a clean, sleek, well-lit hallway. After being in the stone dungeon room in a literal cage, I’ve almost forgotten that I’m not in a castle dungeon.

We move to an escalator. I smile thinly. This place is planned well. Escalators to move between levels is much smarter than an elevator. An elevator is an enclosed space. I could charge them, and force them close in that. With the moving stairs, they can keep their distance.

We move down more hallways. I keep looking, but there’s no sign of Quinn. There is a noticeable lack of other guards though. And cameras. My jaw ticks. My senses tune. This doesn’t feel right.

We move around a corner, and then into a big room—like a shower room, but with no showers. Just pillars where the heads would be attached to. The walls are tiles, with big drains in the tiled floor.

Yeah, this isn’t good.

“Have fun, fuck head.”

I turn, just in time to see the guards smirking as they close the door.

Fuck. My hands are still cuffed. My ankles are still bound.

“Privet ty kusok der'ma.”

Hello, piece of shit.

I turn, peering into the shadows. Suddenly, I see him. No, them; three of them again. The men are shirtless, and my eyes dart over the Bratva ink covering their skin. I’ve seen plenty of Russian mafia tattoos in my life. But it’s the same one on all of their chests that makes me suck in a breath.

Shit. It’s the seal of the Belsky Bratva family—a rival family that was recently all but destroyed, mostly by my own family, the Volkovs. Their leader, Semyon, had made a move against Yuri, trying to double cross him. It got him killed and brought us to war with that entire family. Now, they’re all but gone; their interest swallowed by the Volkov family.

I didn’t pull the trigger, but I played a big part in Semyon’s downfall. Before all of the drama played out, Semyon had approached me, trying to “buy” my loyalty from Yuri. I took his money. I never gave him my loyalty. Just lies. Just enough information to keep him a puppet on my and Yuri’s string.

Semyon was a thuggish moron. To him, money was loyalty. But I owe my life to Yuri. I owe ten lives to Yuri. Turning on him for money would be like turning against your own father.

And so, I played Semyon like the fool he was. I let him think I was in his pocket, up until the moment I wasn’t. And that led to his death.

Something tells me, these men might have a bone to pick about all of that.

“Enjoying your stay?”

I smile. “The spa was lacking, but yes.”

They grin. “Keep making jokes, Volkov scum.”

I raise my wrists. “Take these off and we can joke some more.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

They move close. I tense.

“Semyon Belsky says hello,” one snarls.

“Semyon Belsky is rotting in hell like the cowardly piece of shit he was,” I grunt back.

The one in the middle turns crimson.

“He was my cousin.”

“I wouldn’t advertise being related to shit.”

The three of them reach behind and pull out gleaming, rough looking shanks. I tense, ready to spring. I might have my hands and legs bound. But I’m two hundred seventy pounds of pure muscle. I wouldn’t want to get hit by me in a head-butt.

“You might get one of us,” one growls. “You won’t get all three.”

“Let’s stop chitchatting and find out,” I grunt.

Semyon’s cousin smirks. “I am going to enjoy this, you Volkov fuck.”

“Me too,” I smile thinly, baring my teeth. “I’m curious if you’ll beg and piss yourself like your cousin did.”

He looks livid. But that’s a good thing. I want him furious. I want him enraged and not thinking well. That’s to my advantage.

“Time to die, motherfucker,” he snarls.

They rush. I tense, and then meet them halfway. Blades cut. Blood flows. And the last thing I know is the memory of her face swimming into mind. The last thing I can think of is her lips so soft and wet to mine. And then I know nothing at all.